What is the average cost of getting a new upper cylinder head?

Hi Prochambers,

What happened? I was not keeping track of things here. Anything seriously wrong with the car? I am not sure how much it will cost. But recently I had oil leak problems, and I was advised to put new head gasket. Star Auto, Baltimore gave me a quote of $4500 for a head gasket change.

Hope nothing is big with your car.

Yours,

Ramesh.

Ramesh,

My car has started experiencing the tapping noise coming from the right side top of the engine. I had my timing chain, rails and tensioner done about 3 weeks ago. It blows blue smoke when you first accelerate from a stop light. But it was blowing blue smoke before the work was done. So I think my valve guides / stems need to be looked at. It has good pickup once moving but I always like to get rough estimates way in advance just in case. Thanks.

$4500 for a gasket change? It was only $1200 in the 124 and that included a new timing chain.

You may just have a bad lifter. I would pull the "ticking" valve cover and see what's what. Were you're oil line clips changed?

You may not Need heads yet.. But that aside, to do all the machining (not factoring in any warp or corrosion that needs to be tended) R&R the heads, strip down the whole intake, reseal and clean everything I charge around 3500-4K..
Now if the car has been over heated and require helicoiling that's an additional 550.. Sometimes fasteners snap and require an extra hour or more to extract.. All in all it's tough to give an exact quote as there are so many variables that can come into play.

Jonathan